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How to Brew: Kalita Wave Pour Over Coffee Dripper

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Written by Chris Elliott on Sep 17th, 2013

You've seen them everywhere: cafes, competitions, industry mags, and now on
your favorite coffee equipment site. (We are your favorite, right?)
You're wondering, "What's the Wave all about? Is it the new V60? How does it
even work?" We're so glad you asked.

In this film, Chris demonstrates how to make a proper cup of coffee with the
ubiquitous Wave dripper. Take a pinch of know-how and
give us a moment's time: your new favorite brew method awaits.

The Kalita Wave dripper is the newest manual
pour over brewer in the universe – and it's worlds apart from the
rest. With wavy paper filters, a flat-bottom brewing chamber, and
complementary accessories, Kalita's coffeemaking system both offers
a unique experience and produces a distinct cup. Kalita Wave
drippers are available for purchase at
prima-coffee.com.[inaudible] Hey. Chris
here, from Prima Coffee Equipment, and today, we are brewing with
the Kalita Wave Dripper. This is the Kalita Wave, and this is what
you're going to need to start brewing with this. You have your Wave
Dripper. This is the 155, the smaller of the two sizes. Your
matching filter inside. I'm using a white filter. Your ground
coffee. You can see this is kind of a medium, maybe medium-coarse
grind here on a Guatemala Lab grinder. This is actually a 17. Right
around there. I've dosed about 23 grams of coffee for this size.
We're going to have something to brew into, cup or a server, a
scale to measure everything with, and a kettle of water. This is
the Kalita Wave Pot. Really nice server that we like a lot. You can
also use a thermometer to monitor the temperature of the water as
you brew. I'm going to go ahead and start my timer, and then begin
pre-infusion. I'm going to do about maybe 10% of my total water
volume for this pre-infusion stage. My total water volume is going
to be right around 350 milliliters. I just poured about 35
milliliters of water on top of that. You can see that is starting
to bloom and expand. It's a pretty fresh coffee just roasted a few
days ago, actually roasted by our friends of at Zolo Coffee
Roasters in Bay Area, California. It's a nice specialty roaster out
there. This is actually their French roast, one of the darker ones
in the spectrum, but it's nice coffee. Next, I'm going to begin
pouring for the regular infusion. For the Kalita Wave, I like to do
kind of a quick pulse. This particular grind setting, with the
shape of this filter and the configuration of holes in the bottom,
means that it drains really quick. You can see as I pour, actually,
it starts to deflate right away, and you can just kind of do a
pulse brew to keep that going. The pulse brew, a lot of folks say,
also helps not to over-extract in any one particular area. You're
not really pouring continuously in any one spot. You're just
chaotically going over all of it repeatedly, and that sort of helps
to make sure that it's evenly extracted. Let's talk about the
brewer itself. The Kalita Wave is unique because it's actually
a flat bottom. It's one of the few manual brewing methods that has
a flat bottom filter, so that paper filter itself has a flat
bottom, and then the bottom of this filter cone is flat with three
holes at the bottom arranged in a triangle, and that's where the
coffee drains. Flat bottom filters are nice because they really
promote even extraction. There's not a point at the bottom of the
cone at which it's really clogging up or over-extracting. Flat
bottom is good for that reason. It does require you to pour a
little bit differently. Whereas with a cone-shaped filter, you can
actually get away with a center pour. For the flat bottom, it works
really well to pour all over the place, in a circle or some sort of
pattern, so you're really spreading out all over the place. Let's
see. Right about 260 grams of water, just 100 grams away from our
goal. And one thing that folks praise the Kalita for is it
encourages you and allows you to use a really coarser grind
setting, a coarser grind setting than, say, a V60 or something like
that, and that coarse grind coupled with a longer brew time is
going to get more of those sugar browning out of the coffee. It's a
kind of complex sweetness instead of like a bright pointed acidity,
and I enjoy it for that reason a lot. All right. We're just right
around our target. As that begins to drain, I'm going to take that
off. I'll be ready to go. The Kalita is becoming really popular for
competitions these days. Actually, the World Brewers Cup Champion,
Erin McCarthy used the Kalita Wave for his routine. It's picking up
a lot of speed and really popular brewer now, and for good reason.
It promotes even extraction, makes a unique cup when compared to
other pour-overs, and comes in a range of sizes with a bunch of
different accessories, too, like the Wave Pot Kettle, for one.
That's the Kalita Wave. I'm Chris of Prima Coffee. Thanks for
watching. [inaudible]

CarlJ, I recommend brewing without rinsing the white filters at least once – let us know if you observe a difference. In those two films by Nick Cho, you'll notice that he rinses the brown filters but not the white. They're just so clean! –Chris

Submitted by Alex U on Tue, 11/11/2014 - 16:33.

Would love to see a brew method review like you guys did with the v60.

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